This time, it’s another book: “Grow Fruit,” by Alan Buckingham. Apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, sure, but also currants (which do very well here in Colorado) and peaches (which struggle a bit unless you get the right variety and sometimes even then) and grapes and gooseberries (also great here, if you get the right variety) and kumquats (grow ‘em indoors on a sunporch) and kaffir limes (inedible fruit, but you can use the leaves in Thai cooking) and quinces and and strawberries and figs. Did I mention apricots? Plus blueberries, which are next to impossible here (the soil is just too alkaline), and melons, which are a bit challenging given our short growing season, but why not try?

Susan Clotfelter has always played in the dirt, but got dragged into gardening as an obsession when she reclaimed her hell corner: a weed-infested patch of clay inhabited by one tough, lonely lilac and a thicket of weeds. Along with training as a Colorado State University Extension Master Gardener volunteer, she dug deeper with beds of herbs and lettuce at her home and rows of vegetables wherever she could borrow land. She writes for The Denver Post and other publications and appears on community radio.

Julie's passion for gardening began in spring of 2000 when she bought a fixer-upper in Denver's Park Hill neighborhood, and realized that the landsape was in desperate need of some TLC. During the drought of 2003, she decided to give up on bluegrass and xeriscape her front yard. She wrote about the journey in the Rocky Mountain News, in a series called Mud, Sweat & Tears: A Xeriscape story. Julie is an avid veggie gardener as well as a seasoned water gardener.